INSTAGRAM has been playing around with the idea of a full-screen home feed – one of the features that has made TikTok famous.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, announced on Tuesday that the new design is currently being tested on select user accounts.
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The new feature is meant to offer a more instant and immersive experience as soon as you open the app.
“We’re moving Instagram to a place where video is a bigger part of the Home experience,” Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter.
“Where the content is more immersive – it takes up more of the screen,” he added.
Mosseri also noted that on top of larger videos and photos in the home feed, Instagram is working on a recommendation feature.
This tool would suggest videos and content to users based on what Instagram’s algorithm thinks they might like.
Instagram shared a mock-up image of what the home feed looks like with the new features implemented.
In the photo, the home feed comprised a full-screen post with comments, captions, and likes located on top of the post, instead of below it.
Another noticeable change in the image is that the Stories bar isn’t visible at the top of the screen.
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These features are already employed by the wildly popular Chinese social media company TikTok – one of Instagram’s biggest competitors.
Following TikTok’s astronomical success, many social media platforms have been trying to emulate its features.
Instagram and Snapchat for example, have capped their video content to try to follow in TikTok’s footsteps.
“TikTok’s success is a forcing function on the other social platforms. They can’t ignore the phenomenal growth – it’s so big it may be the future of social,” Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism, said to Wired.
Most recently, Instagram’s sister company, Facebook, launched its TikTok-style short video feature Reels to more than 150 countries, including the UK.
The social media giant’s owner Meta said in February that it was expanding the tool worldwide and adding new editing features.
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